Families Like Theirs
by Jenwryn
Summary: Ginny/Draco. Ginny finds herself stranded in a sea of emotion when she has an unexpected reaction to someone she meets while at a work conference overseas. Post-Hogwarts. The Epilogue is a figment of your imagination and does not exist. One-shot.


_Disclaimer: All publicly recognisable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended._ _Not beta-read._

_A/N: My first attempt at Ginny/Draco. Post-Hogwarts. The Epilogue was a figment of your imagination and does not exist, heheh. Here, I have absolutely no idea where the urge to write it came from in the first place, but oh well! Have fun and review because, you know, reviews are love and all that jazz!_

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**Families Like Theirs**

Sometimes half of the challenge is to remember what has actually occurred in the past. Really remember, not just regurgitate some quasi-textbook rendition. Her family has always been good at re-scripting history to suit their own little quirks. It's strange, actually, because when she was small she'd imagined that only the old, silver-lined, pureblood families were that way inclined. But it is a fact which few people remember – and others try glibly to forget – that the Weasleys are almost as antiquated (if not quite so silver-lined) as those pureblood lines. The Weasleys, the Prewetts, the Longbottoms... the majority of the Order families, in fact, have roots that pass deep into the obscure corridors of wizarding history. And they're incredibly proud. A backwards pride, perhaps: a pride in their supposed lack of pride. Which is all rather perverse, if you think about it for anything much longer than two point five minutes.

Usually the youngest of the Weasleys tries to avoid thinking about it at all. She dislikes the temptation to live inside her own head. She saw during her first year at Hogwarts exactly what sort of trouble_ that_ kind of thing brings you and, unlike Hermione, she usually finds myriad ways to distract herself. But now, right at this moment, standing in the pale light of a Muggle cathedral with her chest heaving and her burning face pressed against its cold, rough stone... well, right here and now those thoughts have her effectively under siege.

Bloodlines. Heritages. Ancient enmities. Things forbidden, things unasked.

Sometimes half of the challenge is forgetting.

At times, when she was younger, Ginny toyed with the family trees in her mind, trying to work out who was related to who. Of course in those days the object of her misguided curiosity had mostly been a certain Harry Potter, but her familiarity with the trees remains long after that foolishness has ended. In her mind she can run a thread of golden thought backwards past her father's name, past Septimus and even Belvina, back to the Blacks, and then take a sharp dive to the right and down towards that other name which so haunts her now as she―

"Entschuldigung, aber geht es Ihnen gut?"

Ginny raises her face from against the stone wall she's been leaning against. She turns slightly and looks at the man who's come to stand before her with a concerned expression on his face. A priest. Of course. Who else would appear out of the blue and ask a random stranger if she's alright?

"Ja, sicher. Mir geht's prima," manages Ginny in a stammered lie and the priest, who can hardly have an argument in the middle of a cathedral about whether or not the redhead is deceiving him, nods doubtfully and glides off.

With a sigh Ginny pushes herself away from the wall. She takes a seat against the unforgiving hardness of a nearby pew. Folding up her freckled hands she places them against the back of the pew before her, then places her face against her hands. It's not prayer, perhaps, but if the ache in her soul is anything to go by then it must be close. Oh, if only she could stop the thoughts from racing, if only she could put her brain on hold, _stupify _it into blessed silence, bore it perhaps with thoughts about her job and the tedious conference that brought her to Cologne in the first place. But it doesn't work, since thinking about the conference just makes her think of the sight of him, glancing backwards towards her, his hair gleaming in the candlelight and his eyes dancing...

It isn't right. His eyes aren't _supposed _to dance. Families like his – families like hers―

The war is over but there are some rifts deeper and older than even Voldemort, things that didn't die, things that won't die. Things which, if truth be told, most people don't really want to die because, despite their high conversations about peace, it's hate for others that keeps them balanced, deep down in some private corner of soul-darkness. And families like theirs―

There's no way she'd felt that charge at the sight of him.

No way she'd smiled so often because of him, these last few days.

No way she'd felt her blood race in his proximity.

No way she'd kissed him.

Ginny groans into her knotted hands and feels the panic bubble again. The cathedral around her rises high and hollow, the sinuous curves of the arches making temple peaks above her unseeing head, the tourists milling past and by without so much as noticing her. She tries to focus on the feel of the smooth timber beneath her fingers, tries to focus on the stone flood leeking cold upwards into her shoes. None of it helps banish the feel of him, the taste of him, from her mind.

She senses him before she sees him. For the length of a skipped heartbeat she tries to ignore him as his slides along the pew's length to where she's seated. Her breathing hitches as his hand moves to the back of the pew before them, moves along and reaches through her tumbled hair to where her own hands are bound together. For a moment they linger there, cool against her freckles, disconnected shapes in the shadows of her hair, scented slightly of soap and salt. But when his fingers touch her jaw she raises her head – breathes – and looks at him.

She wants desperately for him to say something, anything, but then, seeing as she can't find a word herself that's hardly fair. Instead she gazes a lingering eyeful of strangled emotions in his direction. And, perhaps, she thinks as she feels him falling deeper into her own gaze, it's better this way. Because families like theirs―

He takes a strand of her hair, brushes it from her face with his knuckles, then hooks it behind her ear. His fingertips graze along the side of her face and come to rest against her cheek. She meets his touch with a slow-spreading smile.

Families like theirs will just have to learn.

Sometimes half of the challenge is creating something completely new.


End file.
